


honey, believe me

by orphan_account



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: (again: assassin), (five's drunk and gets kissed), (it's not explicitly mentioned but it's my default for writing five), (probably), Abusive Relationships, Additional Warnings Apply, Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Adult Number Five, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Pre-Canon, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Assassin Number Five | The Boy (Umbrella Academy), Autistic Number Five | The Boy (Umbrella Academy), Codependency, Dark, Drunken Kissing, Drunkenness, Dubious Consent, Emotional Hurt, Emotional Manipulation, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/M, Flirting, Gaslighting, Hurt, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Intense, Isolation, Mental Health Issues, Mental Instability, Mild Blood, Mildly Dubious Consent, No Sex, No Smut, Non-Consensual Kissing, Non-Consensual Touching, Number Five | The Boy Needs A Hug, Number Five | The Boy-centric, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Number Five | The Boy (Umbrella Academy), POV Third Person, POV Third Person Limited, Past Child Abuse, Physical Abuse, Possessive Behavior, Pre-Canon, Present Tense, Psychological Trauma, Slow To Update, Swearing, Tags May Change, The Handler (Umbrella Academy) Being Creepy, Touch-Starved, Touching, Trauma, and handler is handler, but i'm staying on the safe side with these tags, hopefully!, or maybe not abuse as such since it only happens once, so five is both physically and mentally 58, takes place during the commission
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-07
Updated: 2019-12-07
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:35:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21708340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: “You did a wonderful job, Number Five,” she informs him. The soft rasp of her voice makes him feel dizzy. He’s not used to this.“You’re welcome.” He’s meant to sound strong, proud, but it comes out too quiet, too shy, and he feels himself flush red. She laughs - perfect and human, everything Five had begun to miss - and kisses him hard enough to stain his lips red, too.
Relationships: Number Five | The Boy/The Handler (Umbrella Academy)
Comments: 10
Kudos: 134





	honey, believe me

**Author's Note:**

> the dynamic between five and the handler was super creepy (esp since he looks so young) and kinda... resonated with me in a way? so here's some toxic handler/five content.  
> title is from "bust your kneecaps" by pomplamoose
> 
> [CHAPTER WARNINGS]  
> \- emotionally abusive relationship  
> \- vaguely mentioned past child abuse (nothing as intense as the show's contents)  
> \- alcoholism  
> \- gaslighting + general manipulation  
> \- non-sexual dubious consent (kissing + touching his arms/face/etc)  
> \- a single instance of physical violence (digging her nails into his skin) (tagged as "physical abuse" to be on the safe side)
> 
> put your wellbeing and safety above this fic. if you feel as if it's too much for you, feel free to click away. i won't be offended!

He doesn’t know what love feels like.

He was too young when he left - 13 years old, sheltered from all the good in the world and thrust abruptly into the bad, a weapon in a human body - and he didn’t know what love felt like, not in this sense. In a way, he’d felt the platonic, familial love of his siblings - the steady tune of Vanya’s violin, the way Klaus couldn’t help but cling to his siblings, the quiet concern in Luther’s eyes - but there’s a difference between family and romance. He may be inexperienced, but he knows that much.

You could say he loves Delores, and in a way you’d be right; he certainly calls it love, when he intertwines his fingers with her stiff plastic ones and twirls her around the room, a gentle hum of old songs on his lips. But he knows Delores isn’t real in the way that his siblings were real, and he knows that, should he ever reach his goal, she’d go back to being a store mannequin, frozen and uncaring, and his love for her would be overpowered by his love for his family.

So he doesn’t know what love feels like, not really, not in a way that matters - and when the Handler runs her fingers across his jaw and makes him shudder, or congratulates him on his work and makes him feel small, or paints his lips ruby-red with her own lipstick, who is _he_ to deny that he loves her too?

* * *

It’s intense, as his life tends to be. One second he’s in an alley in a time he wasn’t meant to ever witness, blood splattered on his shoes, pistol in hand - then a flash of blue, and he’s in her office, her hands around his waist, her grin sharp.

She’s beautiful. He may not have much of a reference, his first girlfriend being a human-shaped bit of plastic he found in a pile of rubble, but he’s _sure_ that she’s beautiful, with the way her hair curls perfectly out of her face, and the stark contrast of her red lips against her pale face.

One of her hands works its way up to his jaw again - he leans into it like a cat, shaking, as uncomfortable as ever with human touch, but craving it all the same - and her smile softens slightly, eyes meeting his.

“You did a _wonderful_ job, Number Five,” she informs him. The soft rasp of her voice makes him feel dizzy. He’s not used to this.

“You’re welcome.” He’s meant to sound strong, proud, but it comes out too quiet, too shy, and he feels himself flush red. She laughs - perfect and human, everything Five had begun to miss - and kisses him hard enough to stain his lips red, too.

* * *

He’s her favourite agent.

Being a soldier isn’t unfamiliar to Five - he and his siblings were _glorified weapons_ to their father, only given names to avoid backlash from the media - but being a favourite _is._ He’d been too cocky and mouthy for Reginald, too willing to refuse and talk back, too rebellious to be manipulated into loyalty like Luther and too brave to be beaten into submission like Klaus. He had never been the favourite - he’d been a thorn in ol Reggie’s side, a _burden,_ something he had to deal with for the sake of power.

But _she_ has no reason to keep him around, _she_ has no reason to offer him this opportunity, and _she_ finds his sarcastic drawls and cocky smirks _endearing._ When he returns from a mission, slightly bloodied and dark-eyed, she’ll smile, and wind her arm around his waist, and tell him he’s perfect, her favourite, the only agent she really needs.

His heart misses a couple beats, and feels awfully warm in his chest.

* * *

“You feel as if you don’t belong here.”

It isn’t a question. His hand freezes, the old coin he was tossing falling gracelessly to the ground with a loud clatter. He doesn’t stiffen - he’s never been the deer-in-headlights type - but there’s something slow and guarded about his movements as he reaches down and retrieves the coin, slipping it gently into his blazer pocket.

“By all logic, I _don’t,”_ he replies simply, tone even. _“I belong_ in the _Academy. I belong_ in a domino mask and a tacky uniform.” A pause. “I’m only here because _you_ wanted me to come.”

Her lips quirk upwards into a smile. She sits on the desk, crosses her legs at the ankles, red heels nearly on Five’s lap. “No, you’re not. You’re here because you _want_ to be.” Her fingers drum on the desk’s surface in a rhythm he doesn’t quite recognise. “You’re here because I can help you, and nobody else could. You want to go home.”

Time passes too slowly. The moment before Five replies feels like a thousand years. “Yes,” his voice is quieter now, “Yes, I do. I want that. I need you to do that for me.”

“And believe me, Five, I _will,”_ her fingers are on his jaw again. She pulls his face up to look at her, and his eyes rest on her cheekbone, unwilling to meet her eyes. “I’ll help you. I just need you to trust me. You _do_ trust me, right?”

“Of course.” He isn’t sure that he’s telling the truth, but her smile widens anyway. He fiddles with the coin in his pocket to distract himself.

“Then believe me when I say you belong here as much as _I_ do,” her voice is almost soft, almost tender. His heart misses a couple beats. He feels raw. “And you always will, even when you leave.”

Another eternity passes in the timeless vortex of the Handler’s office. He runs his nail across the side of the coin once - twice - and inhales slowly, deeply, to steady his pulsing heart. “Okay,” he sounds as weak as he feels, “Alright. I can do that.”

The Handler slips off the desk, heels clicking on the floor, fingers still gentle on his jaw. “Of _course_ you can, baby,” another few beats are missed, “you’re the best I’ve got, after all.”

Her hands trail down his throat to his collarbone before retracting, and he doesn’t stop staring after her until she’s gone, a lump in his throat where her fingers last touched.

* * *

“How long has it been?” He asks her one day, leaning against the door-frame, a bottle of something sharp in his hand, half-empty. It’s one of his few days off - all the bigger cases were moved down the chain to Hazel and Cha-Cha, and if they don’t return by the time their new assignments come in, he’ll be put back on the cases.

It’s no secret how Number Five, the commission’s best agent, spends his days off - a bottle or three of _the good shit_ goes missing from the cellar, and he turns up a few hours later, suit slightly askew, just to stumble his way to the Handler’s office and marinate in his own grief.

_She_ understands why he does this, after all.

She says nothing for a moment, pen moving smoothly across the page in clear cursive, before neatly laying down her papers and looking up to meet his gaze. Her eyes dart across his body in the same way they always do - plain acknowledgement, a little pride - before she stands, neatly and fluidly, and makes her way towards him, heels clicking obnoxiously loudly in the silence of the room.

“Two years,” she says quietly, a smile already on her face, “and three left to go. You’re not sick of me _already,_ are you, Number Five?”

“No,” his voice is unstable, desperate, thickened by alcohol. “But I want to _go home.”_

“And I promised you _will,”_ she stops in front of him, curls her fingers gently around his forearms, watches as he ducks his head and stiffens under her touch - he’s never been one for so much physical contact at once, especially after so long without it. “And we’ll get there _together,_ as long as you stay _here_ with me.”

He sways slightly on his feet (it’s either the alcohol or a nervous thing - he’s never been good at staying still) but doesn’t reply. The silence is heavy, suffocating. Her smile fades slightly, eyebrows furrowing, and she holds his arms tighter, nails digging into his skin slightly.

“You _are_ staying, _aren’t you?”_ she asks, honey-sweet voice juxtaposing the venomous look in her eyes. “You _can’t_ go back to that wasteland, baby, there’s _nothing there._ You _need_ to stay with me, okay?” He trembles slightly. “And I need you, too. You’re the best I have. We need one another, _don’t we,_ Number Five?”

He sways again, breathes a little deeper. “Okay,” his voice is rough, heavy, slurred. “We do. _I_ do. I need you to take me back to them. I could never do it alone.”

The hands around his forearms loosen, and he wheezes, steadying himself with her gentler grip. Her face relaxes just in time for him to look up, glassy eyes meeting hers momentarily before darting back down to her lips.

The silence is painful, this time. The Handler breaks it with a tiny sigh, releasing him from her grip - he immediately pulls his arms to his chest defensively - and running one hand up to his jaw again, another down to his waist. She holds him gently but firmly, and he’s still under her grip, still not meeting her eyes.

“You _know_ how much I care about you, Number Five,” she smiles, venom gone, saccharine. “You _know_ how much I love you. What kind of person would I be to let you do that to yourself, hm? And what kind of person would _you_ be to abandon ship?”

He almost tells her that he’s done it once before - that he’d been 13 and impulsive and abandoned his family for a wasteland and a mannequin and _her_ \- but the words swell in his throat and nearly choke him, so he gives up on saying them.

“I keep you here _for your own good,”_ she insists, smile too wide. His eyes flicker up to hers for a moment, before going back down to the pretty red of her lips. “I’d _never_ do anything to hurt you. You _know_ that, don’t you? Number Five?”

A wheeze. “Yes,” he’s too quiet, too small, slumped against her in a drunken haze, her heel-assisted height suddenly overwhelming. He hasn’t felt so young, so helplessly naive, since he’d first jumped. “Yes, I know. I love you too.”

It tastes like hate on his tongue. She washes it away when they kiss.

She tastes like sin, instead.

**Author's Note:**

> this isn't meant to romanticise manipulation or emotional abuse. this is based vaguely on my own experiences with said topics.  
> i'm planning on having 2 chapters for this - and hopefully a happy ending - but if that changes, i'll be sure to notify you.  
> if you want me to tag anything more clearly, please ask me and i'll get right to it asap xx
> 
> [EDIT 29/02/2020]  
> due to this fic being based on personal experience, it became too difficult for me to directly continue at this time. this may change in the future, but to reflect this difficulty, i've lowered the chapter count to 1.  
> i plan on continuing this story, but not directly - i want to talk about an aftermath, a recovery. i want to talk about how difficult that is, and how it still hurts even when you're worlds and years away from the other party, even when everybody who knows is comforting and sweet. i would much rather discuss that aftermath - those times where you're terrified of the past but kept grounded in the present by the smallest, most fragile things - than the event itself. healing, yanno? can't dwell on the trauma forever; you have to try and help yourself, and writing this helped me at the time, but only brings back bad memories now.  
> so! TL;DR: yes, this fic is over. no, this series isn't over. no, this isn't the end. things like this never have to be the end.  
> take care of yourselves.


End file.
